


Prayer

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Level 10: Agents of Shield Fic [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Gen, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson Needs a Hug, Post-Episode: s01e11 The Magical Place, Skye | Daisy Johnson Needs a Hug, Tahiti is a Magical Place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 16:52:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4356917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye tries to process what she saw -- and heard -- in a dust-choked room in the Mojave, and she wonders if Agent Coulson will ever be the same.  Post-"The Magical Place."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prayer

Skye doesn’t quite remember how they get Coulson back to the plane.  Oh, she does, but she doesn’t – it’s all disjointed flashes, scraps she has a hard time piecing back together.  Like her brain doesn’t want her to think too closely on what they’ve found.  Memories come in flickers, coalescing sharp and jagged in her mind.

She’s kneeling beside him on a wooden floor, her chin resting on their hands folded across his chest.   _Come back come back come back_ , she begs him.  His voice is worn and broken, whispering her name.  She tries not to let him see her cry, even though he had been the one weeping.

May’s at his side, asking him, low and urgent, if he’s all right.  His face cracks in a ragged smile.  He insists he can walk, even though it takes them both to get him sitting up, and he sways as he sits, his feet dangling over the side of the bed.  

They’re hauling him in together, a group effort, the short distance to the cars a marathon Skye knows he shouldn’t be attempting.  Not yet.  But it’s not so bad with one of Coulson’s arms slung over Grant’s shoulders, even if he keeps leaning heavily against the other man, his bruised face pale against Grant’s dark uniform.  Skye and Simmons help, taking Coulson’s other arm, helping him walk.  His feet scuff against the dust of the Mojave, and Skye sees the way Fitz keeps one hand ready at their side to help catch Coulson should he fall; she sees the way May watches their back, cold as steel but shaken, too, by what they both saw.

Skye drives her ill-gotten car over the bumpy desert roads, Simmons silent in the seat beside her.  It’s too dusty to speak and Skye is grateful for the quiet.  She doesn’t know what to think.

There’s a hollow in the pit of her stomach that lingers even after they help Coulson back onto the plane.  Her brain starts working again, like time slows back to normal, something she can process.  She feels a flash of pride when May looks her in the eyes and nods, once, a twitch of an approving smile on her lips.  She’s grateful to see the plane empty for a little while except for their people, even if she knows there will be agents swarming over it again in a few hours, once their operation is complete.  It’s good to be back with Ward and FitzSimmons.  But there’s that hollow space inside her every time she looks at Coulson, and it hurts.

Coulson’s still unsteady on his feet the first few hours.  Fitz and Ward get him cleaned up.  Simmons’ physical finds only small things, words that mean Coulson should be fine.  Superficial contusions.  Partial thickness abrasions.  Fatigue.  Coulson’s mouth moves like a smile but it’s wrong, it’s a mask, and when he catches Skye’s gaze across the room she sees the mask falter.  Then it’s back, and now that she sees it, it does not convince her.

Simmons asks him a question and he tries to joke through it, genial as always.  For a moment Skye is relieved.  Then she sees there’s a tremor to his hands he can’t suppress.  His fingers twitch in his lap, their movements random and jerky.  

Skye asks Simmons about it later, after Coulson is taken back to his quarters.  Simmons says it should pass in time.  She says his nerves are still fired up, that they used some kind of electricity on him.  To torture him.  The word _torture_  sounds clumsy and quiet in Simmons’ mouth, and she has to swallow to get the word out.  It isn’t any easier for Skye to hear.  

Simmons asks, hesitantly, what Skye saw in the room.  How Coulson was when she found him.  Skye doesn’t know what to say and she mutters something about delirium.  What else can she say?  That he wanted to die?  That whatever he saw made him beg for it?

She wonders, chilled, if this is why secrets are kept.

The plane is overrun again by Hand’s agents and Skye retreats back to her quarters, not wanting to deal with the other woman’s scornful looks.  But alone, with nothing to do, the nanny bracelet still clinking against her wrist, she can’t distract herself.

Skye’s in the little room again with Coulson.  She’d found him when she heard the scream; it terrified her.   _What are they doing to him?_  she thought even as she ran, and the fear made her heart pound, made her arms and legs pump, made her rush through that door and into that room.

He wasn’t screaming anymore.  What she found was worse.  She barely remembers hitting Raina.  All she remembers is Coulson laying limp on a stark table in a dust-choked room, and a sudden realization: screams are the sounds people make when they’re frightened of dying.  

Instead he was pleading, voice soft and broken and tired, and it was the sound of a man frightened of living.

_Please let me die, please let me die, please let me die._

She can’t keep the little room out of her head.  The wounds on his face, the feel of his shaking hands in hers, a smell like a hospital mixed with the scent of the looming desert…  and that dead, breathy voice in her ears, his mouth moving like a prayer except without the hope.

So she sits in her bunk with the door closed, hands trembling like Coulson’s, and she wonders what they did to him.  Coulson  _did_  die.  She’s heard him talk about it a little.  Why would he want to again?  What could be that bad?

Skye feels cold, even though her little room is perfectly temperature-controlled.  She piles on the blankets even though the desert’s still outside, waiting like a held breath, and she tries to tell herself he’ll be all right.

_Please let me die._

She hopes she’ll never want to say those words.  But this life – the things they run into, what they fight – maybe she’ll find something that makes her break the same way.  

Skye lets out a long, shuddering breath.

 _He’s not broken,_  she says to herself.  He’s still Coulson.  Their leader.  The man who sees the best in everyone, the man who finds those who deserve a second chance and gives it to them.  The man who’s the closest person she’s ever found to a father.

 _And if he is broken?_  a little voice asks.   _If this turns him into the Cavalry?_

Then she knows she wants to be there.  Wants to be  _here_ , with these people, with FitzSimmons and their chattering, with Grant and his gruffness, with May and her hint of a smile.  She knows they’ll get him on his feet again, help him kick the dust of the Mojave from his government agent shoes, get him back in his suits and his wry grin.  Her fingers tighten on her blankets.  

They’ll believe in him the way he’s believed in them.

There’s a knock at her door, Fitz telling her Coulson’s up and the agents are taking Raina back to headquarters.  Skye meets the rest of the team, and it heartens her to see Coulson back in his boring suit as if nothing had ever happened, even if the scrapes and bruising around his eye and temple say otherwise.

When it’s just them alone with Coulson again, for a moment no one says anything.  They simply look at each other, all of them brimming with hope, with gratitude, and Skye feels safe in a way she hadn’t realized she was missing.  

The others get back to their duties and Skye and Coulson are alone again for the first time since the room.  She’s glad when he reaches out and takes the bracelet from her, but it’s not the victory she thought it would be, even if his hands no longer shake.  There are too many other things on her mind.  

She tries to ask him.  Her words feel inadequate for what she saw, for the desperate grief she heard.  But she has to ask him somehow.  She can’t live with herself if she doesn’t try.

He tells her, calm and quiet, smile at the edge of his lips, that it wasn’t real.

They both know he’s lying.  She hears him again.   _Please let me die._

Skye feels the swell of unshed tears in her eyes.  She doesn’t let them fall, but she doesn’t hide them from him, either.  She nods a little, to let him know that if he ever wants to tell her what really happened, she will listen.  

She knows he knows.  She sees it in the way he swallows, the way he gazes at her.  It’s the best she could have hoped for, and it’ll have to do.

But the hollow in her stomach gnaws at her for a long, long time, and when she sleeps, she sees plastic children playing in dead desert streets, and the voice in her ears is like a prayer without the hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know if I’ll write any more Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fic or even what the fandom is like but I couldn’t bear not to write this one. I haven’t seen any further episodes, so no spoilers please!


End file.
